Two important coral artworks are permanently enriching (starting from March 2nd, 2023) the Royal Chapel of the Treasure of San Gennaro and the Church of Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatorio in Arco, Napoli. The two installations are named “Per Eusebia” and “The Number 85 (with angel wings)”. Flemish artist Jan Fabre created them, thanks to the artist’s donation, the entrepreneur Gianfranco D’Amato and the coral-maker Vincenzo Liverino. The installation, curated by Melania Rossi, brings “Per Eusebia” to the Cathedral of Naples, in the Chapel dedicated to the city’s patron saint, alongside paintings by Domenichino and Lanfranco, more than fifty sculptures and statues of co-patron saints, and the four quintals of silver from the so-called “Splendors of the Chapel of the Treasure of San Gennaro.” The second sculpture, “The Number 85 (with angel wings)”, on the other hand, occupies a niche to the left of the altar in the Church of Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatorio, helping to emphasize the mystical-sacral aura of its surroundings.
Eusebia (2022) is an esteemed panel wholly made of a chiseled mosaic of red Mediterranean coral, set up in the Antisacrestia where the keys that open the safe contain the ampulla with the blood of St. Gennaro, an object of popular worship and devotion, are kept.
The artist has chosen to recall the beginning of the history of this cult by recalling the pious woman, a relative or nurse of the saint, who first collected his blood after his martyrdom in 305 A.D.: once again a tribute, as in other works by Jan Fabre, to women who have played a fundamental role in collective history or his one. The artist dematerialized the image of the saint, which he represents in a poetic synthesis of various objects related to the cult of the miraculous blood: the mitre, made with a riot of coral springs and surrounded by tongues of fire, with large coral tiles that recall the 3328 diamonds, 198 emeralds and 168 rubies that adorn it; at the top of the panel, two keys, identical to those used to open the safe that holds the blood, reach out toward the two cruets made with red cornets, symbols of fertility and prosperity. The composition offers a feeling of movement in which the keys touch the balms from where drops of dark red blood simultaneously descend to the sides of the miter, forming clusters of half-pearls and cylinders of excellent artistry. The background is an infinite chiaroscuro of coral red, a monochrome created by natural variations in hues and conformations composed of the assemblage of small rosettes, cornets, and leaflets resembling tiny starfish, recalling the natural habitat of this extraordinary material.
Number 85 (with angel wings) (2022) is another red coral sculpture from the Mediterranean that could only have been conceived for the Neapolitan church of Anime del Purgatorio in Arco, where Fabre seems to have become attuned to those representations of death in life and life in death that are the soul of Neapolitan Baroque. The work, which appears to be a direct descendant of another sculpture kept in the church, the so-called Winged Skull made by Dionisio Lazzari for the high altar in 1669, consists of a human skull from the sides of which sprout long, tapering wings; on the front is the number 85, whose numerological significance is to be attributed to the souls of Purgatory, and which establishes direct contact with the cult of the dead, or instead of souls. The work is a kind of anatomical meditation in which one can grasp the form of life as it unravels into other living forms, revealing the extraordinary passion for the transformation of this visionary Flemish artist-entomologist, constantly hovering between Bosch, Artaud, and Cuvier. But it is also an invitation to an initiatory journey, to a purifying elevation, recalled by the wings stretched upward, wishing healing for the soul and following the ascending idea of Dante Alighieri himself in the Purgatory of the Divine Comedy.
